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Directed by Marion McClinton, the show ran for 68 performances. Dutton as Levee and Whoopi Goldberg as Ma. It was enormously well received.Ī Broadway revival opened on February 6, 2003, at the Royale Theatre, featuring Charles S. It was first performed in the UK at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1989 in a production by Howard Davies starring Clarke Peters and Hugh Quarshie as Toledo and Levee. The production was recorded and released by Manhattan Records. It received a 1985 Tony Award nomination for Best Play Dutton and Merritt were nominated for acting awards. The show opened on Octoand show ran for 276 performances. It opened at the Yale Repertory Theater in April 1984, and then moved to Broadway's Cort Theatre. Richards and Wilson worked together for almost two years on the play. At that time, the best-known actor in the cast was Theresa Merritt, who played Ma.ĭirection was by Lloyd Richards, one of August Wilson's most frequent collaborators. Dutton as Levee, Joe Seneca as Cutler, Leonard Jackson as Slow Drag, and Robert Judd as Toledo-almost immediately developed a very strong sense of ensemble. The four main members of the cast - Charles S. The play had its first staged reading in 1982 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. In a rage, Levee fatally stabs Toledo, destroying any possibility of a future for himself. Levee is then simultaneously fired by Ma for his uncompromising behavior, and rejected by producer Sturdyvant when he tries to get his own record deal. As the band waits for various technical problems to be solved, Levee and Cutler come to blows. Ma's insistence that her stuttering nephew Sylvester speak the title song's introduction wreaks further havoc. Tension is apparent between the young hot-headed trumpeter Levee, who dreams of having his own band, and veterans Cutler and Toledo.īy the time Ma Rainey arrives with entourage in tow, recording has fallen badly behind schedule, enraging producers Sturdyvant and Irvin. As they wait for her to arrive they tell stories, joke, philosophize, and argue. In a Chicago recording studio in 1927, Ma Rainey's band players Cutler, Toledo, Slow Drag, and Levee gather to record a new album of her songs. Its Broadway debut at the Cort Theatre in 1984 won a New York Drama Critics' Circle award and garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was published in the early 1980s and premiered at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Rainey, whose life as a well-known blues-singer of the 1920s is an inspiration for the play, is also the titular character. The play's title comes from Ma Rainey's song of the same name, which refers to the Black Bottom dance. The play is set in a recording studio in 1920s Chicago, and deals with issues of race, art, religion, and the historic exploitation of Black recording artists by white producers. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play – one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by August Wilson – that chronicles the 20th-century African-American experience.
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Ma Rainey's Black BottomĪ blues group waits to get to work in the studio, and tempers flare. For the 2020 film adaptation, see Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (film).